When the 21 year old dryer that came with our farm broke weeks ago, I just moved everything to the line drying.. which is used a lot but I need the dryer to remove pet hair from our clothing.

when the farm sale (for 20 bucks) older fridge started acting up, I limped along until it truly broke..

When our trusty old van started giving warning signs, I listened but we still got over two years worth of drive her sweet time out of the old girl.

and then there is my kitchen floors, they needed repair work, we had patched them over the years on the farm.. but the truth was, we really need to pull the lino and replace.

As it turns out we also need to replace the whole subfloor as well..

Now I could have gone on Kijji and found replacements and that is just what I did for our new to us lovely 4 by 4 suv with hitch we are the trucks 4th owner and she has been very well looked after, and if we continue to do so, we should easily get a good number of years with her.

But after talking it over, based on one thing, a very big thing.. we went new for both the dryer and the fridge. The dryer in power costs savings to move to the new model is huge, and add in the fact that it has a senser that turns it off when the cloths are dry, regardless if I turned the timer for longer and it is just awesome.

In Ontario, they say that the cost of hydro will go up 40 percent of the next four years.. that is a crazy hike, and so with those kind of prices, the savings on the new, will repay itself even faster

the fridge was chosen as a big all fridge, because we have a freezer in the main floor and because I wanted to ideally stop running two fridges for half the year or more. Milking takes up a lot of room, and then all harvest season long, I need the room.

It also has a fast chill setting with will be amazing with the fresh milk and small soft fruits..

The floor is different, we thought we could do it quickly.. wrong.. but when its done, it will be good for another ten, 15 or twenty years, As a dear friend said, normally folks do this kind of deep repair and redo to get a place ready to sell.. you my dear, get to enjoy it after.. I loved that way of seeing it.

I called in some help in a number of ways, I called a friend to scrape the van for cash(paid for our new toilet that uses half the water per flush, yes on the well water) I called to have scape metal (the old dryer-fridge and a freezer) hauled away

Add to that for the third time since on the farm, we rented a huge bin and we are doing another farm cleanup, the repair work first, then the farm cleanup. One of the things that we are most excited about, is that we are allowed to put yard waste in the bin, all our bags of sun cooked wild parsnip we have pulled over the season will be heading off the farm..

The pocket book is whimpering but lets face it, in savings, tax free or the like, I can get a better return putting it into saving money on the power bill and see a better return and that is so very sad indeed

What about you, have your replaced anything in the past year to help save money in the long run.

One Response to Old vs new

Huh, it seems this has been the year for change for you guys as well. We had, in the same month, 3 important things break: the swimming pool, the car and the dryer. So we replaced them all. We got a nice big minivan which is great for our big family. It actually runs cheaper on gas then the car did. The swimming pool we decided to replace since we don’t really go anywhere yet with me still in school, so we have “staycations”. The dryer, well we did for 5 months without and were very happy to get it replaced. We waited for the perfect sale: half off. 🙂

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